Hard to believe nowadays, but the St Stephen's Green shopping centre - that tawdry Mississippi riverboat stranded at the top of Grafton Street - was the flagship of the Dublin Millennium in 1988. It opened its doors just before the end of what Dubliners dubbed "the aluminium".
Harder still to credit that its entire South King Street frontage was set back by civic decree with the aim of widening the street so that it could more easily accommodate two moving lanes of traffic plus a line of parked cars. Now that same street has been closed altogether, probably for ever, to through traffic.
Signs went up last week restricting entry to deliveries between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m. An attractive stone-flagged plaza has already been laid out in front of the beautifully refurbished Gaiety Theatre, with polished granite benches and a row of trees, and work is in progress on a water feature at the western end of the street.
It seems an unlikely candidate for pedestrianisation, however. The street has few enough shops on its north side, flanking the Gaiety, while its south side is lined by fake shopfronts - the rear ends of retail units facing on to the shopping centre's greedily cluttered ground-floor mall - interspersed with basement staircases.
Had Rice's and Sinnott's pubs survived, as well as a myriad other business premises - shops selling antiques and curios, books and bric-a-brac - the street would now be much more lively. But at least 60 different properties were obliterated by Patrick Gallagher long before British Land developed the shopping centre.
Sinnott's was replaced by a basement changeling on the same site as the original pub, but everything else is gone. External staircases lead down to Wagamama and the aptly named Down Under at Major Tom's; otherwise, the only openings on to the street are the shopping centre's entrances, which are designed to suck people in.
But Owen Keegan, Dublin Corporation's energetic director of traffic, foresees South King Street developing as a "natural extension" to the Grafton Street pedestrian zone - aided by the banning of through traffic.
"We see this as a catalyst for change, including a complete remodelling of the shopping centre in time," he says. "We're confident that property owners will see the merits of what is being done when there's a big increase in the number of people walking by. The shopping centre itself is a very enthusiastic supporter and ideally located to capitalise on the creation of a safe, pleasant and attractive pedestrian environment in the area."
The main reason for closing South King Street to through traffic was what Keegan calls "mayhem" at the main entrance to the shopping centre.
"There was constant conflict between cars and people trying to cross the street and, in the end, we decided that the only way to solve it was to go for the 'zero car' option," he says.
It had become clear that the original plan to narrow South King Street to a single east-west traffic lane would not eliminate the "chaotic" situation at the junction with St Stephen's Green. "So we decided to call it a day and admit defeat" - or, to put it another way, "run up a white flag and declare victory" for the pedestrians.
The scheme was not without its critics, notably the Jurys-Doyle Group, which feared that the closure of South King Street would have a significant adverse effect on its Westbury Hotel. Already hemmed in by the part-pedestrianisation of South Anne Street, which it also opposed, it felt the latest step would cut it off altogether.
Keegan accepts that major traffic flow changes in the area have turned into something of a confusing maze for motorists.
Streets that used to run one way now run the other, and even Dublin Corporation's own multi-storey car park in Drury Street has suffered; business is down by 30 per cent because many motorists can't find it.
The changes are all occasioned by the corporation's implementation of the South Inner City Environmental Traffic Cell, which aims to make the entire area between Grafton Street and South Great George's Street more "pedestrian-friendly" by reducing the volume of through-traffic - in effect, by turning it into an obstacle course.
Once upon a time, and it's not too long ago, the corporation's road engineers were almost manically devoted to widening streets to cater for more traffic; now, the new breed of engineers in the civic offices are dedicated, with a different kind of zeal, to narrowing streets to manage, tame and "calm" traffic in the city.
Traffic catering has been replaced by traffic management, and this paradigm shift is reflected in almost everything the corporation now does in this area of activity - in the emerging network of bus corridors and cycleways, the banning of left or right turns to reduce traffic levels in O'Connell Street and other stern measures.
Although Keegan accepts that it will take a while for people to adjust to the closure of South King Street, he is convinced that the benefits will "far outweigh any perceived losses". Indeed, Richard Alan's decision to relocate there, leaving Escada to redevelop its shop on Grafton Street, is seen as a vote of confidence.
The immediate beneficiaries have been theatregoers. Where once they spilled out on to the roadway because the footpath outside the Gaiety was so narrow, they now have plenty of room to disport themselves, lolling around on the stone benches or simply admiring the theatre's attractive glazed canopy.
Further up the street, beyond Clarendon Row, another plaza with more seating in the same style is to be installed across the full width of the street. Its centrepiece will be a fountain featuring jets of water spouting from a circular pool flush with the street surface, making it "litter-proof", according to Keegan.
All of these improvements constitute a commendable example of the public sector giving a lead in achieving urban renewal; even the refurbishment of the Gaiety itself was substantially funded by public money through the Millennium Committee. But it will take more than this to make a lively place of South King Street.
Much will depend on Irish Life, which recently acquired a majority interest in the St Stephen's Green shopping centre from British Land. The former owners, who got cash and the ILAC centre, Henry Street, in return, were aware that "something" needed to be done and had commissioned architects Burke-Kennedy Doyle to look at the options.
As it stands, the centre "muscles into every view around St Stephen's Green", as Angela Brady and Robin Mallalieu observed in Dublin: A guide to recent architecture (1997). "It is also a most blatant example of the cynical developer maxim that if you trap the customer inside with the goods (by obscuring the exits), sales increase".
But it will not be enough merely to replace the ridiculously dated faτade to St Stephen's Green or, indeed, the rolled-out brick wallpaper along South King Street, which crudely mimics the Gaiety. If the centre is to make a real contribution to the street, it must become less introverted - in effect, by turning itself inside out.
This would almost certainly pose real difficulties, not least in terms of security. If all of the retail units with their rear ends facing the street were to open outwards as well as inwards, shoplifters would be able to breeze through. But surely it is possible to envisage a much livelier street frontage, perhaps even with external escalators.
The remaking of South King Street, scheduled for completion by December, represents an act of faith in the future. Unless it receives an appropriate response from the private sector, it will fail. If so, at least it will qualify as a "new mistake", in Keegan's terms, and not an "old mistake" like the road-widening scheme that preceded it.